


September, 2016

by gunsandships



Series: What Was and Wasn't [3]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2019-03-10 20:43:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13509432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gunsandships/pseuds/gunsandships
Summary: Alexander is having a hard time coping with Eliza's death, and has taken to cursing quite a lot. Angelica tries and fails to cheer him up.





	September, 2016

**Author's Note:**

> Long time, no see! I'm considering fleshing this story out a lot more than I'd originally thought (i.e. writing about twenty chapters instead of, like, five). Let me know what you think.

For someone who throughout his life had had to deal with such an immense amount of loss and grief, Alexander Hamilton had an exceptionally ineffective way of grieving. 

(Effective grieving, in this sense, means grieving in such a way that one’s heartbreak is thoroughly processed and, with time, can begin to heal. Ineffective grieving is pretty much the exact opposite: sweeping it under the rug and pretending there is no such thing as feelings 8:00 AM through 3:29 PM on weekdays, and then at 3:30 PM going home to an empty apartment to stare blankly at a wall, not emerging until the following morning to repeat the cycle. Of course, one could argue that taking time out of every day to ponder one’s loss could be considered processing – and in theory, this is often true. However, as was the case for Alexander, “staring blankly at a wall” really did mean _nothing_ more than that, brain activity included. And when you count in the time between 3:30 PM on Fridays and 8:00 AM on Mondays, the amount of wall-staring becomes quite excessive and, thus, non-effective.)

He awoke with a startled yelp, abruptly sitting up and yanking the duvet off of his body. He was drenched in sweat, as if he had been running a marathon, not sleeping, and his eyes and cheeks prickled with fresh tears. The clock on his nightstand showed 6:58 AM. What day was it? Tuesday? Wednesday? He picked up his phone to check. Tuesday. Turning off the alarm that was set to go off in two more minutes, he got up and dragged his feet into the bathroom. _I am fine._

Soaping himself in was tiring. Heck, just standing upright, even under the comfortably warm stream of water, was exhausting. His bones felt ninety years old rather than thirty-three, and his skin and hair seemed to agree with them – his face was sunken and sallow, his hair matted and slightly grayer than before. He hadn’t noticed. If he had, he probably wouldn’t have cared. Getting out of the shower, Alexander dried himself off, wrapped a towel around his head like a turban, and sat down on the toilet. He needed a breather. It was like the act of getting out of bed and showering had taken his entire day’s supply of energy. _I am fine._

 _I am fine,_ he repeated inside his head, _I am fine, I am fine._ He skipped breakfast, as had become his habit. Just yesterday, a colleague had told him how slim he looked and asked if he’d gone on a diet. Alexander had laughed hollowly in her face and told her to get the everloving motherfuck out of his own. 

As he walked into his office, the familiar knot in his stomach tightened. No one was sitting on top of his desk, or on his couch, or waiting at the door, two coffees in hand. His office was empty, and the office opposite his, the spacious, nicer one, _her_ office, was full of someone else. There was no use going in there anymore, as he had done up until last week, just to sneak a sniff of the hand lotion in her desk drawer – a desperate need for a sensory reminder of what she had been like. He had even considered stealing it. But before he’d gotten around to it, the hand lotion was in a cardboard box which no one had known what to do with, on top of the bookshelf, along with her spiral notebooks, her special pens for grading papers, and the baby blue teddy fleece blanket she had kept for when Alexander needed a quick nap and company. Now, instead, there were someone else’s books in the bookshelf, someone else’s computer on the desk, _someone else’s_ ugly fucking cardigan draped over _her_ chair. Her replacement had started working there a week ago, and he already loathed her with a passion. 

His new colleague was nice enough, and her education had been far longer and more expensive than his own, so he had no reason for his intense dislike of her entire being. She seemed to be settling in nicely, chatting to other coworkers by the coffee machine and laughing with students in the hallways. The only logical explanation was that she was not Eliza. 

It had been almost a month since her passing. _Who the fuck dies in the middle of summer,_ he had taken to thinking angrily whenever there was no work to immerse himself in. _Who the fuck just up and leaves while they’re supposed to be having fun in the sun? Who the fuck dies three days after their own birthday?_ Agnostic at best, Alexander didn’t believe in a god (which probably was a good thing, because if he had, he would definitely have gone to hell for all the things he would have said to it), and that made Eliza’s death simultaneously easier and a thousand times more difficult to come to terms with. If there had been a god to blame, he would have had someone to direct his anger and frustration at. It would have been so much easier if he knew that there was a greater meaning behind it. At the same time, such a meaning would have been impossible to accept the ludicrousness of, so there might as well not be one. 

“Hey,” a voice seemed to cut through the thick fog of his exhaustion and agony. “You don’t look too good.”

“Thanks,” Alexander replied through gritted teeth. “What do you want?”

Angelica Schuyler looked at him – if he hadn’t known her so well, he would have thought it was pity her eyes were radiating, but they were close, and he recognized her harsh stare as a mixture of worry and sorrow. “I want you to take the day off. Just as I am.” She held up her hand to stop his protests of “I have work to do” and “I can’t just _take the day off_ ”. “How about some coffee? My treat.”

Defeated by her stern look, he just nodded and grabbed the bag he had slung over his desk moments before.

Perched on the edge of her seat in Fraunces Café, Angelica grabbed her cup of coffee from the barista with a grateful nod. Alexander sipped his own. It burned his tongue.

“Look, Angie, I really should be getting back to-…”

“Work? Nope. I’m your boss, and I’m telling you to take the day off. Alternatively, if it makes you feel better, I’ll pay you to sit in this café and talk to me for a couple of hours. Consider it your work day.” The corners of her mouth twitched. It didn’t reach her eyes. He knew she was hurting, too.

Alexander didn’t open his mouth again.

“Alex, I know the last couple of months have been as hard on you as they have on me,” she started.

“What? She’s your _sister_ – I can’t even imagine – you were so close –,” he spluttered.

“It’s not a competition. I’ve just noticed you haven’t been… coping, and I wanted to check in on you.”

“I’m doing fine,” he murmured into his coffee, burning himself again.

“That’s a lie if I ever heard one. You spilled ketchup on that shirt at lunch on Friday, and the stain’s still there.”

Hastily licking his thumb and trying to locate the stain to rub it, he angrily grunted, “Ketchup is very hard to get out of cotton.”

“You haven’t washed it, have you?”

“Huh?”

“The shirt, Alex.”

Admitting defeat, he lowered his thumb and shook his head. Trying to justify it, he said, “It’s been a busy weekend.”

“I’m sure it has.” Angelica rolled her eyes.

Truth be told, maybe it had been a conscious decision not to launder that particular item of clothing. It had been Eliza’s favorite to lounge in after sex, and if he concentrated hard enough he could still _almost_ smell her in the fabric. The last time it had been worn before he, on Friday last, finally had pulled it out from the bottom of the pile of dirty clothes he hadn’t tended to since before her death, it had been her wearing it. Just a couple of months ago, she had been alive, warm and breathing, in his gray cotton shirt, glowing in the midday sunlight peeking through the blinds in his bedroom. It seemed like a lifetime ago. 

“I love you,” she’d said that day, laying on her back on the mattress, her leg swung over his own. Her hand was under his head, toying with his hair, the other resting on her exposed lower stomach. “All the time I was with him, I just wanted to get back to you. You know that, right?”

“I know,” he’d replied, hoisting her leg up further and squeezing her thigh to him. “I love you, too.” And she’d smiled the way he adored so, so much, with her eyes closed, humming in approval of his touch.

They hadn’t said anything for a good ten minutes after that. Eliza had rolled over and kissed him lazily, letting him stroke her back under her – or rather, his – unbuttoned shirt. Her underwear had lain forgotten in a bundle of clothes on the floor. This was one of those perfect days, the ones it caused him actual agony to dare to think about now. They had been just like taken out of somebody else’s life, a life he could never dream to live fully, but enjoyed every taste of nonetheless. Now the carnival was over, had packed up and left town, and he knew he could never hope to experience anything like it again.

“I know the wound is still fresh,” Angelica said, snapping him out of his fog for the second time that day, “it is for all of us. But I felt like it was about time to do it, nonetheless. Before it gets too cold out.”

“Uh… What?”

“She didn’t get a thirty-third birthday party. She was too sick by then. I thought we could all get together.”

His jaw clenched, and he felt the disgust rising like bile in his throat. “She’s dead. There’s nothing to celebrate.”

“I want to celebrate the fact that she _lived_. God knows we could all use a good party,” Angelica reasoned, putting her hand on top of his. “Peggy agrees. It would be nice for you, too. Just to get out for a change. Not sit inside and stew in your own grief.”

“You can shove that idea right up your fucking ass, Angelica. I’m your friend and I care about you, so therefore it is my duty to inform you that A, this is a horrible idea, and B, I’m not coming. I’m going back to work. Thanks for the coffee,” Alexander said coldly, standing up. Angelica just waved him away with a sigh, before fishing her phone out of her purse and sending out the invitations.


End file.
